Memory ~ Agha Shahid Ali
(from Faiz Ahmed Faiz)
Desolation's desert. I'm here with shadows
of your voice, your lips as mirage, now trembling. Grass and dust of distance have let this desert bloom with your roses.
Near me breathes the air that's your kiss. It smoulders,
slowly-slowly, musk of itself. And farther,
drop by drop, beyond the horizon, shines the
dew of your lit face.
Memory's placed its hand so on Time's face, touched it
so caressingly that although it's still our
parting's morning, it's as if night's come, bringing
you to my bare arms.
Big Book Of Poetry
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Train Timetables ~ Ismail Kadare
I love those train timetables at little railway stations,
Standing on the wet platform and contemplating the infinity of the tracks.
The distant howl of a locomotive. What, what?
(No one understands the nebulous language of steam engines)
Passenger trains. Tank cars. Freight cars full of ore Endlessly pass by. Thus pass the days of your life through the station of your being, Filled with voices, noise, signals And the heavy ore of memory.
Translated from Albanian by Robert Elsie.
Notes: Kadare was awarded the 1st International Man Booker Prize this week. Also since I can't stay away from trains, and trains can't stay away from my thoughts, I couldn't resist archiving this small poem in my Big Book
Big Book Of Poetry
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From Song of Myself - Walt Whitman
Notes: I was walking home from school the other day, when by the roadside, at the margins, I found this empty Coke bottle, and these newly sprouted spears of grass. And I began humming those wonderful lines of Granpa Walt: I loafe and invite my soul,/ I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
[1] I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
......
[5] I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
....
[7] A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
Tenderly will I use you curling grass, It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps, And here you are the mothers' laps.
This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouths.
.....
[31] I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d'oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress'd head surpasses any statue, And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.
Big Book Of Poetry
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